1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to document sharing and retention. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer usable program code for dynamic configuration of multiple sources of documents and source types in a business process.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many e-business environments, a need exists to share documents not only within a company but also between companies in order to conduct everyday business. Products such as IBM Workplace™ enable companies to work collaboratively together, using a variety of applications. A system where multiple stakeholders may participate is commonly referred to as a document-centric business process. The number of participants and the location of the participants may be dynamically manipulated in a runtime system. The document source at each stakeholder location may be one of several modalities, such as paper, facsimiles, email attachment, enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, and web pages that may all be dynamically updated.
However, current systems lack the ability to dynamically configure an existing business process by adding or removing additional participants and document types without requiring restart or recoding of the process. The problem is exemplified in a business process, such as import compliance processes, where the number and location of stakeholders varies based on geography, supplier, freight forwarder, customs broker and importer. The ability to dynamically tie several participants into a single process backed by a common document repository without requiring customized coding or restart is a common problem.